Out of Sight, Out of Mind
by badriddance
Summary: For a prompt asking for Dan suffering the awakening of a repressed memory, something about his father. Because I can be a grim little stormcrow, this is what I came up with.
1. Chapter 1

Nite Owl was heavier than Rorschach, bigger and wearing armor. Rorschach went across the old floor with only a creak and Nite Owl followed. One of his feet went through with a crash. He lost his balance and fell, and the rest of his weight crashing down sent him all the way through the floor. He fell for a short ways and landed hard in a clinking, stinking heap in the dark. He slid and the pile fell over on him. It was cold and hard and wet like slimy tree branches underwater.

He heard Rorschach call out to him, but when his mouth opened to answer something fell into it. It was so old and rotten that the only taste was decay. He spit it out and tried to get his feet under him.

He got a hand free to adjust his night vision and found himself half buried in a pile of severed limbs. Arms and legs, in various stages of putrification were stacked like firewood. He scrambled backwards, clawing for purchase, and knocked over a pile of heads. One still had a Mickey Mouse heart-shaped barette in its tangled hair. The face was as abstract as Rorschach's, just empty patches of black over papery skin.

Rorschach could hear him moving and was waiting for him to say something . Maybe it was best that he didn't call out in case their targets were in hearing range. As soon as that thought had occurred to him, Nite Owl ruined it by screaming.

"No!" he gasped. "NoNoNo!"

"Nite Owl?" Rorschach whispered back. His hackles were bristling in alarm. He had never heard his partner wail like that before. The drug runners they were following would be long gone by now. While he tried to slap some light out of his flashlight, Rorschach was nearly run over as Nite Owl came barreling back out of the hole. Nite Owl didn't speak, just sprinted back towards the ship.

Rorschach nearly followed, but hung back to shine the light down into the hole. Thoughts of smuggled drugs dissolved under the sight of what had to be at least a dozen dismembered bodies. His brain immediately began to look for connections between this address and any recorded disappearances. Outside, he heard Archie's engines roar to life. He would have time to think about this on the long walk home. 


	2. Chapter 2

Hours later, on the way down the long tunnel, Rorschach could hear an erratic pounding. From the sound of it, Nite Owl had gotten hold of a sledgehammer. It sounded solid, so he wasn't taking his anguish out on Archie or anything fragile. That was a good sign, probably. Rorschach really had no idea what he was going to say. He sensed that it wasn't something normal that had sent Nite Owl running home. He could feel his own numbed horror at what they had found fueling the fire for long-overdue vengeance.

No torsos, he had processed, just limbs and heads, all with long hair, a few just children. He thought of the torsos, like dressmaker mannequins, displayed somewhere else for some sick deviant's pleasure and felt his fist tighten in his pockets. Whoever had done this would have to pay for it, but they needed to find out how long ago it had happened and who had lived in the old building at the time or had access to it. There was work to be done, but first he had to find his partner and put him right again.

The banging got louder as he got closer to the light. He could hear the crumble of cement now, grunts of exertion around a soft litany of 'No's and 'Just a dream's.

This was not the weakness of a decent man's natural reaction to atrocity. This was something much deeper and stranger, and it chilled Rorschach the way the charnel pit hadn't. Cautiously, almost expecting attack, he crept closer to the Nest.

Nite Owl was there, half out of his costume, whaling away at the wall behind the stairs with a pickaxe. It was impossible to tell if the sounds he was making were from exertion or if he really was crying.

"Nite Owl," Rorschach said, worry making his usual rasp uncertain. Then, "Daniel?"

Dan looked up. It could've been sweat or tears streaking his face, but the look of horror on his face were plain.

"Maybe I'm crazy," he sobbed. "Maybe it was just a dream, but I _remember_ now…"

Rorschach stood frozen, hands useless and prickling. "Tell me," he said after a long silence.

"If I am crazy, I'll be too ashamed at having said it," Dan said. He started to swing at the wall again. Rorschach hoped it wasn't a load-bearing wall. He assumed it was if Dan had spared it in his Nest renovations. "If I'm not, you'll see for yourself."

Rorschach was quiet for another long stretch, and then looked around. He saw the sledgehammer still leaning against the wall with a shovel and a fire axe. He considered the merits of knocking Dan out and dragging him upstairs versus logical argument and sighed. He took off his hat, coat, suit jacket, and vest, rolled up his sleeves and his mask, and reached for the sledgehammer. He went to help smash the wall down.

Dan didn't thank him or say anything else, which was odd, but Rorschach was also keeping quiet about innocents lying un-avenged while they did home improvements. With both of them working, it took about twenty minutes to break through to a door, bricked over and cemented away. Dan made a sound like a crushed rabbit and staggered back a step from it.

"What is this?" Rorschach asked. Dan was shaking now, and not just from the work. He was pale, and not just from the cement dust.

"I found this door unlocked for the first time after my mother died," he said. "I was looking for my Dad. He had gotten drunk and maudlin the night before and came blubbering into my room about how it hadn't been an accident, that she had killed herself, but he had hidden the note so the police wouldn't investigate."

Rorschach looked at him quickly, but he was still staring at the other door.

"He said it was his fault. She had killed herself because she couldn't live with it anymore. What he did. She had known and she had helped him as much as she could, but she hadn't been a believer and it had eaten her up from the inside. And I was, God, just a kid and still grieving and scared to death of this bawling drunk crazy man wearing a mask of my father's face. He left and I heard him go down the stairs into the basement. He hadn't come back by morning, so I went looking for him."

Dan was silent another moment and then reached for the doorknob. It didn't open at first, still blocked with the cement rubble, but Dan gave it a yank and the old wood splintered. Nothing but dust and darkness inside, but Dan stood staring into it like it would reach out and pull him in.

As the light from the Nest leaked in and his eyes adjusted, Rorschach could make out vague shapes. His previous imaginings came back to him. It looked like a dressmaker's shop, everything in its place, except that instead of smooth-sided mannequins, these were withered down to piles of bones and organs. This was where the torsos had gone. 


	3. Chapter 3

Dan was gone when he turned around again and Rorschach almost panicked before he noticed the door at the top of the stairs was open. He hurried up and found Dan sitting at his table, still in half his costume, with his hands covering his face. He was breathing like he was trying not to be sick, deep, careful inhales. A grab at his collar, a good shake and a threat and he'd break, spill out everything, and be done. It would be fast and easy, for Rorschach at least. Instead, he sank into the opposite chair and waited. He didn't have to wait long.

"He had made a little archway out of the limbs like fucking St. Vitus cathedral and I ran right into it and it all collapsed on me," Dan said from behind his hands. "I screamed and screamed and couldn't stop and he dug me out and he was furious. I had ruined _everything_ and it was bad enough _already_ and would've been better if _I_ had been the one to kill myself and I kept screaming and he started hitting me. I don't know how long I screamed or how long he hit me, but I woke up in the hospital.

"He told them that I had taken my mother's death well at first, but then had decided to die to be with her and stepped out in front of a car like she did. The driver had panicked and taken off. That's what they told me when I woke up and I didn't question it. By the time I was released, the door had been sealed over and the cement was dry. I believed it. I had some bad dreams about broken doll pieces and boxed all my toys away because they gave me the creeps… "He trailed off and hung his head. "Do you hate me?"

"What?" Rorschach was genuinely taken aback. "Why-?"

"Son of a serial killer. Let him get away with driving my mother to suicide. Buried the memory deep enough that I wouldn't have to think about it. Lived over his victims for years. Never said anything to anyone until now. Let him get away with it. Must make you sick."

Rorschach was quiet just long enough for him to assume the worst, and then reached for him. He pulled Dan's hands away from his face and held them, awkwardly, clumsily.

"Sick for you," he said. "Not… not at you. Hate him, not you." It sounded as ungainly as it felt. Then with more anger, he muttered. "Still gets away with it. Can't have investigation if it will expose your identity. Have to lay them to rest ourselves."

"Shouldn't let it go for my sake," Dan said, but his fingers curled gratefully around the gloved ones.

"Don't intend to let it go," Rorschach said, gruffness coming back. There was an anti-police grumble waiting in the wings, but he was holding it back. Rorschach didn't often hold back, so Dan was paying careful attention for the other shoe to fall. The gloved hands gave his an almost imperceptible squeeze. "Or you. "

He stood up, letting go abruptly.

"I know what to do," he said. "You stay here."

"It's too late to protect me from this," Dan said, getting up too. "I have to deal with it. "

"Shouldn't have to face it twice."

"You shouldn't have to face it at all. It's not your burden."

"Everybody has burdens, Daniel."

"Not everybody's has a body count!" Self-loathing twisted Dan's face but Rorschach stared it down.

"Carried it alone long enough," he said. "Don't mind helping." Dan struggled for an argument, then for a way to say thank you, and then just put a hand on his shoulder and followed him back into the dark. 


End file.
